These Losers are Guarding our Galaxy

I chose to evaluate the trailer for the movie Guardians of the Galaxy which came out August 1, 2014. After the first scene, it is easy to recognize the movie as action because of the mini battle that is shown. This is backed up throughout the rest of the trailer too as we are shown many more scenes with gunfight and combat.

One of the biggest attention grabbers in the whole trailer is when the Marvel name is shown while the catchy song “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum playing in the background. Marvel is a huge comic company and in recent years has had a huge success converting old comics to films. Putting the name out there early on in the trailer establishes a lot of ethos; if someone doubts the trailer, they can at least leave knowing that it is coming from a credible source. Chapter 3 of the textbook says one way to enhance ethos is to establish credibility and that is exactly what is done here.

Based off the trailer, we get a sense that there is a fight going on between two sides, a good side and bad side. We are never told who the bad side is, but it is referred to and represented a few times by characters dressed in hoods and dark attire. We get a sense of the good side and each main character has a distinct feature about them, making them very easily recognizable.

Early on, I easily picked up on appeal to emotions, pathos.  In a few scenes, the main actor’s abdominal section is showcased, adding sex appeal for females. On the other hand, male sex appeal is shown by showing the lead actress’ bare back in one part of the trailer. These scenes might be short and do not add much to the storyline, but I’m sure the producers added them in for the specific reason of pathos.

I looked hard to find some sort of logos but I came up empty. There was not much of a real reason to why a human was in outer space or why there was a battle between good and evil going on.

Chapter 14 of the textbook talked about visuals in arguments. The Guardians of the Galaxy trailer utilizes text to add dramatic effect and to name actors. The color of the text really stood out to me; it was yellow/gold with a black background. However what I liked about it was how the font gave out an outer-space feel; it was almost like it was modeled after the Star Wars movies.

What is the most important aspect of a movie trailer is whether it persuades the viewer to go see the movie or not; this is also referred to as the argument. I believe the argument could use more work. The whole trailer seemed to show action scenes but then there would be a funny scene, I was confused the whole time if the movie was supposed to be serious or not. The action seemed convincing enough to make a Marvel fan want to see the movie but if someone was on edge about it, I think they would decide to not watch it. The argument was decent, but it does not do a good job explaining why the two sides are fighting and who the two sides are. For this reason, I am giving the trailer three pickles out of five. The acting, ethos and text were all excellent but the lack of logos keeps me wondering what is actually going on.